What my musings are all about...

Blogging might well be the 21st century's form of journaling. As a writing teacher, I have always advised my students to keep a daily journal as a way of organizing their thoughts for future writing projects, a discipline I have unfortunately never consistently practiced myself. By blogging, I might finally be able to follow my own good advice.

The difference between journaling and blogging is that the blogger opens his or her writing to the public, something journal- writers are usually reluctant to do. I am not so reticent.

The trick for me will be to avoid cluttering the internet with more blather, something none of us need more of. If I stick to subjects I know: sports and literature, I believe I can avoid that pitfall. I can't promise that I'll not stray from time to time to comment on ancillary subjects, but I will make every attempt to be interesting and perhaps even insightful.

Monday, January 27, 2014

NBA Standings and etc.

Here are my predictions for the NBA standing come the end of the season baring significant injuries.

If Greg Oden stays healthy and keeps improving, and D Wade is ready to go, don't bet against Miami to three-peat.

If Jermaine O'Neal returns and plays healthy the rest of the season, and Jordan Crawford pans out don't be surprised if the Warriors upset the Clippers.

What is it with Sherman of the Seahawks accusing people who lambasted him for his insane rant after the Seahawks win over the 49ers of racial insensitivity? Now all of a sudden we have articles like the one I read this morning in the Sacramento Bee entitled All-American Manning vs brash Sherman. Manning is being portrayed as fair haired and polite. Sherman is being described as having dreadlocks and trashtalking. Hummm, maybe young Sherman is on to something???

I just finished reading a non-fiction book entitled Goat Brothers written by Larry Colton. Colton played baseball for the University of California Bears and the Philadelphia Phillies. He still holds the single game strike out record for the Bears. The book is a must read for men and particularly for men of the Sixties generation to which I belong. It follows the life of the author and four of his close friends and Pi KA (the jock house) fraternity brothers who called themselves the Goat Brothers. Of the four, Loren Hawley, Steve Radich, and Ron Vaughn played football for Cal. Jim van Hoften was a top gun in Vietnam and then an astronaut on the Challenger. Without giving too much away, it's a revelatory book about male behavior in the sixties and seventies, their successes and failures. It's punch-in-the-gut truthful, sometimes heroic, and bitter sweet.

Here's another poem honoring winter sports;

On Cedar Lake 1957Before our skates had touched the pond that dayWe knelt to see, inbedded in the ice,A fish long dead, his frozen eye turned up;And further on through surface clear and greenA sluggish waving weed in silent water.But who could care for all that moved below?Our skates are sharp, the air is brightThe lake is wide; we swoop, we glide,Take flight and dip and swerveLike gulls. We fly, we fly.

Thomas Meschery, a son of Russian immigrants, he became the first international player to play in an NBA All-Star Game in 1963.

An All-American success story. Born in China in 1938, he came to the U.S. with his parents after WW II. An All-American at Lowell High School, San Francisco, and St. Mary's College, Moraga, California. He was the youngest player to named a first team AAU All-American. NBA Star for ten seasons. Noted as one of the toughest players in the NBA. His jersey number has been retired by both St. Mary's and Golden State Warriors. Inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.

Tom has published two books of poetry, 'Over the Rim' and 'Nothing You Lose Can Be Replaced' and a fourth-coming book of verse, 'Some Men'. He was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2000.